Strategy Development

What impact will we hold ourselves accountable for? How will we achieve it? How can we expand our impact? How will we organize to get it done and what will it cost? Together, the answers to these questions provide a framework for developing a pragmatic, specific plan of action: a strategy.

Over the last decade, we have worked with over 300 nonprofits to develop and refine high-impact strategies. In our Harvard Business Review article, “Delivering on the Promise of Nonprofits,” we underscore the importance of answering the aforementioned questions and provide examples from past work to highlight how nonprofit leaders have come to ambitious yet realistic answers.

Latest Publications

Living Into Your Strategic Plan

"Living Into Your Strategic Plan: A Guide to Implementation That Gets Results" highlights important steps in the strategy implementation process and provides guidance on how to get started.

Scaling Impact

How would your strategy change based on the answer to this question: “How can we get 100x the impact with only a 2x change in the size of the organization?” In this article, Managing Partner Jeffrey Bradach identifies strategies pioneers have used to grow impact beyond what their organizational size would seem capable of generating.

Featured Content

Zeroing in on Impact

Many nonprofits have Goliath-sized aspirations. In this piece, we look at the role of a well-articulated Intended Impact and coherent Theory of Change as a critical input into a strategy that will get results.

Going to Scale

How can proven nonprofit programs increase their reach? Drawing upon lessons learned by nonprofits such as Jumpstart, City Year, and STRIVE, this article explores how the nonprofit leaders can think about the decision to replicate and what steps they can take to help their replication initiatives succeed.

Getting Replication Right: The Decisions That Matter Most for Nonprofit Organizations Looking to Expand

Are you sure that replicating is right for your organization? And if so, are you ready? This paper examines the potential benefits and difficult challenges that confront organizations looking to grow through replication and features several youth-serving organizations as examples.

For additional resources on the organizational and funding aspects of strong strategy, please visit our organizational effectiveness and funding pages.